Skip to main content

New Year's Goal - Positivity



I've been playing with grateful and gratitude apps the last month. It is one of my goals in 2020 is to focus more on being positive and I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to go about it.

This past year has been a little rough in terms of watching the news, budget cuts at work, gaining weight, getting older and I've been focused a little too much on the negative.

At first I thought I might want to just share my grateful thoughts on Facebook but I didn't want to annoy anyone with my posts (you know the ones that start in November and lead up to Thanksgiving Day and we get it...YOU. ARE. THANKFUL not to mention FB posts are super hard to sort).

Anyway I thought of a employing a "happiness jar" but I didn't want my husband to ask me "What is that?" and me having to explain. This is more of a "me" thing than a "him" thing I am not sure he has every been "unhappy" so he wouldn't understand (I am assuming that is a guy thing and leave it at that...or at least a "my guy" thing).


Photo Credit - http://bit.ly/2QcNPAb

I then started thinking about adding notes to my phone's Notes App but I am terrible at keeping those up. I still shop with paper lists (and I have tried to go to digital lists...really...it just annoys me I have to log in after every aisle).

That got me thinking about apps and so I started trying some out. I wanted a free or cheap app that was easy to use and that I could look back on whenever I started feeling a little down. 

A lot of them are initially free but then require "in app purchases". I narrowed it down to two apps - Gratitude Happiness Journal and the Grateful a Gratitude Journal App. 

The Gratitude Happiness Journal app had a lot on its "free" side but to upgrade there is a monthly charge and I am strongly against assuming a monthly charge. I could have lived with the "free" side but if I ultimately wanted to add more pictures, more posts, or export my journal than I would have to upgrade. If you are not interested in those features then the free version is pretty robust. 

The Grateful app was limited on its "free" side (15 journal entries) but to upgrade there was a one time $5 charge (which is easier to take then a monthly charge). It was super simple to use, included the abilities to add more pictures, more posts, and to export. It is also "no frills" (I don't need a daily affirmation the other app offered). I wasn't too excited about how the data backs up. I looked at the back up in my Dropbox and exported as a PDF and the company could certainly improve both but I could live with it. So I ultimately went with that app.

I've been posting once a day (usually with a picture) since December 10th just to get myself into the habit so that I am "official" ready to be more positive in 2020. 



So if you are like me...trying to focus more on the positive in the New Year you might consider testing out some of the available apps before 01/01.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.
13 comments
Read more

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&
5 comments
Read more

Bill Nye Songs with Lyrics

At the end of the Bill Nye videos he always has a fun song that goes with the episode. You can find many of the songs as stand alone videos on YouTube. This came in handy because today I am teaching a lesson on layers of the atmosphere and found a song from his Atmosphere video on YouTube titled "Fresh Aire." I really wanted to remix it and put the lyrics on the video (so the kids could sing along and see how the lyrics matched the lesson). The first thing I did was found a site that has all the Bill Nye lyrics posted used my YouTube downloader ( see instructions here ) and downloaded the song. I then imported the video into Movie Maker Live and used the caption feature to put the lyrics on the different frames (cutting and pasting from the lyrics site into Movie Maker Live). I saved the video and reposted to YouTube so other teachers could use the video with lyrics (the finished video is posted above). The process was pretty easy and I am thinking about doing it for more
Post a Comment
Read more